Apple Confirms Headphone Chip Fears

Lebowski said:
Is it me, or do the majority of Apple fans seem to be more left leaning and anti-big business ect, yet they worship a company that uses the underhanded Big corporation techniques they despise so much.
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Generally speaking, most people buying Apple are ignorant morons who only hate Microsoft because of what someone else TOLD THEM, and get their info off of blogs.
 
Virtus said:
So you buy a super tiny shuffle. Then you have to plug an adapter into it to use your own headphones? So you end up with something bigger, more convoluted, and more expensive than the previous shuffle?
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The same "logic" behind the MacBook Air.

Put only one USB port on it.

Release an external DVDR drive that CANNOT be used through a hub or on any other computer. Including Apple's own.

Release an ethernet controller that is USB only. Again. One USB plug. Want to use an external mouse? Gotta have a hub if you're gonna be using wired network.

Force customers to choose between networking or the DVDRom on the MacBookAir.

So to keep everything you need with the MacBook Air, you've got a bag full of accessories.


Apple: Selling you less for more.
 
techrat said:
The same "logic" behind the MacBook Air.

Put only one USB port on it.

Release an external DVDR drive that CANNOT be used through a hub or on any other computer. Including Apple's own.

Release an ethernet controller that is USB only. Again. One USB plug. Want to use an external mouse? Gotta have a hub if you're gonna be using wired network.

Force customers to choose between networking or the DVDRom on the MacBookAir.

So to keep everything you need with the MacBook Air, you've got a bag full of accessories.


Apple: Selling you less for more.
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Yeah, its retarded how Apple tries to be "innovative" when all they do is piss people off.
 
Zellio2009 said:
Generally speaking, most people buying Apple are ignorant morons who only hate Microsoft because of what someone else TOLD THEM, and get their info off of blogs.
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Dunno about that. IIRC when Apple launched iTunes it was the least restrictive AND cheapest service around. I remember the early days when stores were charging $2.99 and $3.99 per song. IMO it's the main reason behind the success of iTunes (people would probably still buy the iPods because of the cult effect.) Then they offered DRM free. Then they went DRM free (I think?)

Apple hasn't screwed up totally but this is a step in that direction.
 
Guitarrasdeamor said:
2845670786_7dbe3850de.jpg
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Haha. That is the first thing I thought when I saw that ad awhile back. :p
 
Absolutely ridiculous, if you ask me. I mean, seriously - not being able to use your own fucking pair of headphones for your iPod?! I have never felt a hatred toward Apple for anything until this. I've always felt that they were doing a great job by sticking to their proprietary hardware vs. software scheme, as it's proven extremely successful over the past 5 years. But this? Psh, fuck that. I'll be looking into other mp3 player brands as long as they keep this up.
 
ill stick with my 30gb dell DJ. Not that I would EVER buy an apple product. I wont even buy one as a present for someone else. I wish they would have just died way back when, F MS for helping them.
 
MavericK96 said:
Guitarrasdeamor said:
2845670786_7dbe3850de.jpg
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Haha. That is the first thing I thought when I saw that ad awhile back. :p
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I'm surprised people still question the use of "funner" and "funnest." I don't think there's a Non-English major around that has an issue with the word "fun" being used as an adjective anymore and as an adjective there's no reason it shouldn't be able to be inflected by the same rules other adjectives are.
 
Volkum said:
The worst part is that it'll still sell like hotcakes. :rolleyes:
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I don't know about this one. Even Apple fanboys are doing a double-take at this new Shuffle. I think word will spread pretty good that this new Shuffle is useless.
 
Yeah, I think I'm done buying Apple products for a good long time. Jerks.
 
supaspoon said:
Isn't this over the top proprietary attitude what buried apple the first time? You know, back in the day......like in the early 80's right before msft dominated the market. (srry, I was only a wee yungin)
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They do it with their OS, might as well throw headphones into the mix too....

Seriously, Apple shot themselves in the foot with this one.........

And Sandisk just sold a hell of alot more Sansa Clips, methinks.........
 
dagas said:
If you want to use good headphones you should get something better than a shuffle to play the music anyway.
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QFT.... Something like the Sansa Clip, for instance..... Every review i've read says it treads into audiophile territory. And that it's one on the few MP3 players that sound good with the EQ turned off.
 
I am a long time Apple user but damned if that headphone thing isn't the stupidest lock-in I've seen since the chipped ink cartridges. It seems completely at odds with what they've done with iTunes and the music store, particularly with the announcement about removing DRM from all the songs.

So... did they just pile up all the DRM and truck it over to the Shuffle factory?

Since most MP3 player owners (all brands) seem to use the crap headphones that are included it's not going to affect many people, but still. The philosophy behind it is just total bullshit.
 
Always nice to be proven right or at least find vindication of your beliefs but... even so... this is still pretty fucked up, but it's Apple, should we really expect more?

Now I get to tell that friend of mine he's been vindicated... won't matter in the long run I guess. Bleh.
 
yer pretty stupid, greedy bastards. whats their problem, oi lets over complicate somehting, the whole 'simplicity by design' culture at apple must not apply when in the way of .5% of their profits.
 
supaspoon said:
Isn't this over the top proprietary attitude what buried apple the first time? You know, back in the day......like in the early 80's right before msft dominated the market. (srry, I was only a wee yungin)
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Not entirely, but it sure as hell helped dig the hole.
 
The update at the end of that article is interesting... Currently I don't own any Apple products nor do I see myself owning any of their products in the future.
 
Tekara said:
I'm surprised people still question the use of "funner" and "funnest." I don't think there's a Non-English major around that has an issue with the word "fun" being used as an adjective anymore and as an adjective there's no reason it shouldn't be able to be inflected by the same rules other adjectives are.
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It sounds retarded.
 
I really cannot understand how apple keeps suckering people into buying their crap. Non-removable batteries, tying their players to itunes and the list goes on and on.

My wife had a shuffle (no idea what generation, nor do I care) and of course the battery died. She wanted a new one for Christmas, so I got her a Sansa Clip with twice the storage, the same size and an FM radio built in for half the price of whatever POS shuffle was available. I couldn't believe anybody even considered the shuffle for what they charged and the lack of features. I tell anyone I can to avoid apple unless they want to pay double what they could pick up a non-apple equivalent for.

Don't even get me started on that iphone POS...
 
apple had a good streak going with the iphone, the macbooks with nvidia gpu's, and the dual nehalem desktops, but this is such a huge blunder.
 
bobzdar said:
I really cannot understand how apple keeps suckering people into buying their crap. Non-removable batteries, tying their players to itunes and the list goes on and on.
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It's called the Cult.
And I'm dead serious.

Remember The Onion's "Macbook Wheel"????

That right there freaking proved the Cult exists. There were Apple fans that were ready to buy that worthless POS.

grimreeferx09 said:
apple had a good streak going with the iphone, the macbooks with nvidia gpu's, and the dual nehalem desktops, but this is such a huge blunder.
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Apple had good thing going in two areas:
iPod (they need to do some actual innovation though, as Cowon, Samsung, Sony are geared with some AWESOME players that will best it).
iPhone (gathered a bunch of features all into one device that nobody else had. It does have the wear-off effect though, they again need to innovate to keep on top).

I wouldn't even count Mac. I think we're pretty much at "Peak Mac" as you would say. They've passed Windows in security vulnerabilities now going on three years? They've got enough work to do with their tiny market share, much less play with the big boys.

I think Apple will learn from their mistake with the Shuffle though (if they don't, I guess they honestly don't deserve to be on the top of anything...) and move ahead again.
 
I like ipods but, this sounds like some greedy bullshit. If Apple made good cheap headphones they wouldn't have to do underhanded shit like this.
 
Also, their newer I-pod's have an encryption chip to make it so the video output won't work unless you buy a $70 Apple cable. Before you could just buy a $2 cable on ebay with 3 rca outputs.
 
There will be a Chinese knock-off shuffle headphones by the end of the week at a 1/10 of the cost of the official apple ones. I have to say I like my nano but this is just ridiculous of them to force companies to use this chip in order to be "Made for iPod". Actually that might be a benefit. If I was a company making quality cans then I wouldn't want the "Made for iPod" label on them so people know they are getting a good product.
 
The stupid thing is that this is nothing new, just one that is more obvious to consumers so people are doing a double take.

Apple has been feeding proprietary and locked in type products down peoples throats for years, and they totally accept it, while bad mouthing competitors that are MUCH more open.

I remember seeing how much apple gets for each dock connector (license/patent type deal) on 3rd party devices...it was multiple dollars PER UNIT. Friggin insane.
 
Man. I saw these come in to my Best Buy. Even watched a customer buy one. I thought, "Hey, 4GB and a cheaper price. Smaller and thinner, too eh? Neato."

Can't use your $100 headphones on it? Or can't even use your $10 headphones on it that still sound twice as good as the garbagey ones that come with it? Wow. This is beyond proprietary. MP3 players are the pinnacle of sharing music, and universally transporting and enjoying your digital audio files anywhere, anyway you want. Every single modern player out there now can play standard DRM Free MP3s. It's universal. Every single modern MP3 player lets you use whatever headphones you want. Almost all the modern MP3 players are USB ... UNIVERSAL serial bus. Any computer, Mac or PC (I'm assuming they work in linux too) can charge them, and most can even copy songs onto them somehow.

Until NOW.

Seriously. A music player that I can't put my own headphones on without buying a stupid adapter?

Even Sony MP3 players will use whatever headphones you want these days. This is 100% unacceptable. I'm going to tell every damned customer that asks to buy one that none of his great headphones and none of the ones we sell in the store will work on it right out of the box. He'll have to order an adapter online, or wait weeks until our little store gets them in stock, because Apple's slow getting new accessories out like that... Complete, utter FAIL, as has been said above.

And again, I ask, seriously ... a player that talks to you? I can recognize 90% of my songs (the 10% being the ones that start out almost silently) within a second or a fraction of a second - way faster than some uninteligible computerized voice is going to be able to tell me. Now... if I could tell it what song I wanted to listen to and it would play it for me? That would be cool.

But NOOOOOOO. Apple has to add as many "teh suck" points to this new toy as possible.

Could it be that the govt. is conducting stupidity experiments, or some other type of fanaticism experiments on the people via Apple Inc.? It would make more sense than thinking that Apple's actually putting these things in their new shuffle because they think their customers will benefit from it...
 
Sorry for the second post, but I want to remind the world of Apple's famed statement:

"It just works."

Yeah, Leopard just works ... but not at release date, and not without killing your iLife apps, and not without a few weeks of updates and patches so stop those Safari crashes (oh, wait, Safari still crashes....)

Yeah, the Macbook Air just works, too ... except very slowly and without possibility of future upgrade, and oh yeah, with only one USB port, so while it works, only ONE of your other devices can also work at the same time ... oh and the Air really does work, I mean that optical drive makes it just like a regular laptop ... errr ... but not with USB hubs, and don't forget that now you have two pieces instead of just one, all to do the same "work". Who needs more than one device anyways, though, right? I mean the weakling processor can't multitask anyways ....

Oh, and the iPhone ... (not even going to go there.)

But this new shuffle, it sure works good! But not with any other headphones but Apple's own, unless you pay extra for an adapter.

How the frak can they do this and still have so many customers? I have been very pleased with my Macbook over the years I've had it, but jeeze, someone needs to start making commercials about how false this "It just works" statement is. Someone should seriously sue over this. Apple would sue anyone else for publicly making false claims about their hardware - how is it that they can make false claims about their own stuff?
 
Yea...I'll just reiterate my previous statement of how I will not be buying any of their products...in fact I'm pretty sure I'd rather swallow a razor blade.
 
You can't really use an iPod without 3rd party headphones. Maybe if they made the included headphones produce anything close to resembling music, they'd be ok.
 
lol...I ranted about the 'new' iShuffle continue lack of screen & stupid nav buttons on the earphone on a thread just couple days ago...

Now what ? They added an Apple's-earphone-only chip . Heh, this move is 100% Apple culture™

Since that 'just works' chip gonna contribute in suckin' more power from their 'just works' batteries...It's even safer than ever to suggest my friends 2 get the Sansa Clip over this iSuffer
 
Ok, I think folks are getting off the beaten path here and making a mistake or two along the way so, for the record:

You can use any damned pair of headphones or earbuds or IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) that you want with the new iPod shuffle - they will function normally as playback devices as long as they have the standard 1/8" (3.5mm for you Metric weirdos) stereo (meaning 3 conductor) plugs. For just listening to music played from the shuffle, any headphones with the standard stereo headphone plug will work.

HOWEVER...

What you will not be able to do is adjust the volume as that's a function of the earbuds that come with the shuffle courtesy of that little inline remote control bud, nor will you be able to control the start/stop/play/pause/back/forward functionality of the shuffle either.

That's where Apple's little chip is going to matter in all this because it will apparently only work with either the original shuffle earbuds that came with it or some "officially licensed" product that fits into Apple's "Made for iPod" bullshit they're going to now start pushing down third party accessory maker's throats.

Lame, but it's true, and announced (more like admitted) by Apple itself.

Just wanted to clarify that as some folks are under the impression you can't even listen to the shuffle without the original earbuds. While on a technical level that's patently false, you may be able to use any headphones with a 1/8" stereo plug to do that, you just can't actually control anything while listening... ;)
 
So, in other words, you can't really use the shuffle with 3rd party headphones without the inline control + proprietary chip. ;)
 
Joe Average said:
Ok, I think folks are getting off the beaten path here and making a mistake or two along the way so, for the record:

You can use any damned pair of headphones or earbuds or IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) that you want with the new iPod shuffle - they will function normally as playback devices as long as they have the standard 1/8" (3.5mm for you Metric weirdos) stereo (meaning 3 conductor) plugs. For just listening to music played from the shuffle, any headphones with the standard stereo headphone plug will work.
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The problem that I've read about most is that there are already headphones on the market that should be able to control the Shuffle, but cannot.

The Shuffle's click-button interface is used on the iPhone as well. As a result, there are IEMs that have the controls built in. Yet while the Shuffle earbuds can control an iPhone just fine, the aftermarket IEMs cannot control the Shuffle. Same control scheme, yet Apple decides to break the implementation. That's the "WTF?" moment in this mess. What's the point of making the tiniest MP3 player when you need a convoluted control scheme to make it work? Would it have killed 'em to put even a single button on the Shuffle?

Whatev. It'll make headlines and sell like hotcakes. If they want super tiny with proprietary headphones, why not just make the earbuds themselves the MP3 player? I know many Bluetooth headsets that are bigger than this thing. I'm sure Apple could do it. Ah well, I'll just keep using my Storm for music.
 
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